A Grimm Prognosis
by LunaPadma
Summary: Fitz is in a coma for nine days.


1\. Fitz is wearing red. He has a red cap pushed onto his curls, a matching hoodie, and a bright red case in his hands. The case is a defibrillator.

He walks through the woods carrying the defibrillator. He's bringing the defibrillator to Jemma, who lives in the woods, and Coulson warned him not to delay, not to stop and talk to anyone. Jemma needs the defibrillator.

Fitz focuses on the path. If he stays on the path, then Jemma gets the defibrillator and the world is saved. His footsteps echo through the empty woods. _Stay-on-the-path_ they seem to say.

"Hello, Fitz." Grant Ward melts from the shadows and steps onto the path. "What do you have there?"

"It's—Jemma—I don't want to talk—stay back!" Fitz stutters, stumbling over the basic words he can't get out. He tries to move backwards, but he can't.

Ward takes a few steps, closing the distance between the two of them. From here, Fitz can see his terrible wild eyes and horrible pointed teeth. "It looks like a defibrillator. Is that for Jemma?"

Fitz doesn't trust himself to speak. Instead, wrapping his arms around the defibrillator and cradling it to his chest, he takes off running, trying to put as much distance as he can between himself and Ward.

And he steps off the path.

Instantly, the way to safety through the forest disappears. Fitz runs blindly through the woods, hoping against hope to find Jemma and come up with a plan, as they've done so many times before.

Up ahead, a gap between the trees, there is a medbay pod. Fitz puts on a burst of speed. He has to get there before Ward does or they're all dead.

He opens the door.

Jemma is lying on the floor, eyes wide open. She has suffocated. It is Fitz's fault. If he had only gotten there sooner, she would have lived.

The defibrillator is now an oxygen tank, but it is empty. Fitz used it all on his run through the woods.

Grant Ward appears in the doorway. "Look what you've done, Fitz," he says. "It's all your fault she's dead." He shuts the door and walks away as Fitz falls to the ground.

Fitz is wearing red. The cap, the hoodie, they are blood, Jemma's blood, and he is drowning in it, suffocating as all the air in his body is driven out by the warm red blood and he can't breathe—

2\. Fitz is holding an oxygen tank with one breath left as Coulson berates him. He's traded everything for that one breath and it was wrong, everything was wrong, Fitz couldn't do anything right. He tried to explain that it was Ward, that he was the one responsible, but he can't get the words out.

Then the Bus flies straight up, straight into the clouds and lands on top of one, in the lands of giants. Giants like Garrett and Ward and HYDRA and Fitz can see that Ward is holding Simmons and dangling her off of the clouds, ready to send her down into the ocean.

Fitz leaps off the plane and knocks Ward aside. Jemma turns to look at him, smiles hopelessly, and jumps.

This time there's no parachute or tall, dark, and handsome hero to save her life, but Fitz jumps anyway because he'll die if she does and he tries to give her the oxygen tank and save her life, but then they hit the water and they're sinking and she won't take it and save herself and the water is filling up around them and choking them and all Fitz can see is the medbay pod and—

3\. Jemma stands over him, looks in his basket to see if there's anything she wants to buy. They're in the forest again, just outside the medbay pod. Her eyes alight on an oxygen tank, and Fitz holds it out to her.

"When you push this button," he explains, "It'll let out a burst of very high pressure that should force your lungs open."

She cocks her head to the side, curiously. "But what will that leave you?"

The words he wants to say are stuck in his throat. "Only one of us gets out of this, Jemma," he says instead.

Then seven tiny Wards run out from the pod and slap the apple—no, it's an oxygen tank—out of his hand. As it hits the ground, Jemma collapses. Dead.

As Fitz sinks to his knees, the leader of the tiny Wards fastens his hands around Fitz's throat. "I know that you care about us, Ward!" Fitz chokes out.

"You're right," Grant Ward says softly. "I do. It's a weakness."

The water rushes in and knocks the world out.

4\. "You can spend the night with her," Grant Ward says. "But I require something of you."

Fitz nods. He has picked up many trinkets on his travels to this medbay pod, East of the Sun and West of the Moon and at the bottom of the ocean, among them an EKG releasing a faint signal, an oxygen tank with one breath left, and a defibrillator.

"I want the tank," Ward says, reaching down and grabbing it.

Fitz can't say anything. The words are frozen in his throat. Instead, he runs into the room where Jenna lies. "You look so peaceful when you sleep," he says softly. "I didn't want to wake you."

Jenna sleeps on. Carefully, Fitz attaches the wires of the defibrillator to the window, slams the button, and blows the window in. He buries them in ninety feet of seawater, and Jemma's scream dies with them.

5\. The sea-witch Raina has promised Fitz a set of gills and a tail if he can get the oxygen mask to Jemma.

She lies there on the floor of the medbay pod, asleep and wrapped around Agent Triplett. The betrayal stabs him in the gut, but that doesn't matter. Jemma has to live.

As he tries to get her limp hand to curl around and take the mask, Ward and Mike Peterson pull him to the ground and drag him to the ocean. The mask lies on the floor.

Fitz dissolves in the ocean made of acid as Jemma recites the First Law of Thermodynamics.

6\. Coulson orders them out of the Bus and tells them to build their own homes to protect them against HYDRA.

Skye isn't careful. She builds hers out of straws, and Ward walks right through them to destroy her.

May is careful. She builds hers out of wood. Sticks, logs, anything she can get her hands on to build her defenses. But it's not strong enough, and Ward blows it down without a struggle.

But Fitz. Fitz is an engineer, and his home is a medbay pod—pressure resistant, bulletproof, everything. It's an engineer's dream. It's so perfect that he shelters Jemma there, too.

Ward's craftier than Fitz could have imagined. Ward huffs, and he puffs, and he blows the pod right into the ocean. They drown in a pocket of air in the strongest coffin ever made.

7\. Jemma looks so beautiful.

There's so much that Fitz should focus on—the HYDRA soldiers surrounding them, for one—but he can't take his eyes off of her. She looks scared, excited. She's definitely out of her comfort zone.

Then an alarm rings: it's midnight. Jemma turns and runs, takes off so fast that Fitz can't catch up. All that's left on the stairs is a shoe made of glass. No, it's not a shoe. As Fitz picks it up, it changes, forming an oxygen tank with one breath left.

He sets out to find her, find the beautiful woman who dropped a shoe—no, a tank. The search takes him to a medbay pod.

Garrett opens the door, flanked by Ward and Mike Peterson. He ushers Fitz inside, where Jemma is lying unconscious. He rips the tank out of Fitz's hands, locks the door. Fitz runs to the window, yelling, "Ward! I know you care about us!"

Ward takes the tank and smashes it against the window. Both shatter.

Over the roar of rushing water, Ward asks, "Do I?"

8\. Fitz and Simmons run through the hallways of the Bus. They have to make it back to Coulson and the team, but the quarters Fitz laid out to find their way home have moved. They're lost. They're about to die.

Up ahead, they see it: their only hope. A medbay pod with walls of cake and windows of spun sugar and a floor made out of some ridiculous Italian cookie that only Jemma likes.

They dash inside and lock the door, keeping Ward outside. But the real monster is already inside. Garrett waits inside for them to lower their guard, then he slams Jemma to the floor and locks Fitz up in a prison.

He'll devour them, eat their brains and their hearts and their wishes and their dreams. Jemma could kill him, Jemma could fix this, but she's unconscious. This isn't how it's supposed to go; Jemma's the smart one. Jemma's the strong one.

Fitz cannot do this without her.

Garrett stokes the oven and throws Fitz inside. Fitz is burning, he's on fire, his lungs are burning through his chest. He can't breathe. He can't breathe and Jemma's not here and there's no tank for him, if there was a tank this time, then Jemma has it and that's all that matters but Jemma's unconscious and it still bloody_ hurts_ to die without oxygen.

9\. Ever since Fitz was a little boy, he was afraid of dragons. He doesn't like any reptiles, actually, but dragons always topped his list of terror.

But there's no time to panic. Ward is a dragon, taunting him, blocking the path. Behind him is a castle, and in the highest room in the tallest tower, Jemma sleeps.

Real heroes, the kind of heroes that win, get swords and shields. Fitz isn't a hero and his SHIELD is broken, snapped in half by monsters just like this one.

Instead, Fitz has medical equipment. Fitz might not be a hero, but he damn sure is an engineer and he'll get out of this the same way he gets out of everything else. He grabs some odds and ends and pieces together an EKG releasing a faint signal. This, he buries in the dragon's heart and watches as the dragon dissipates.

Fitz runs to the castle, but the doors are locked. No matter. He uses ethanol and an AED to blow them up. He keeps running, he has to get to Jemma.

Jemma is lying on the bed. Water is about to pour through the windows of the tower. "You look so peaceful when you sleep," Fitz murmurs. He sorts through the things he grabbed before coming into the castle, but there's no oxygen tank.

There's _always_ an oxygen tank. How else is he supposed to save her?

Then Fitz remembers the course they all took back in the Academy, on CPR. Just before the water spills into the room and wipes them all away, he takes a deep breath and presses his mouth against hers.

Her eyes fly open.

10\. He can't breathe.

There's something down his throat choking him, and he can't get it out. His arms are so heavy. Will he die this way?

He starts thrashing, hoping to dislodge it that way. Fitz is crying, desperate to breathe. He needs _air._

"Fitz?" It's Jemma. Oh God, she looks so beautiful. Is she crying? "Fitz, hold still for a second. I need to remove the breathing tube."

Fitz obediently stills, and she drags the tube out bit by excruciating bit. "Thank God you're alive," she says. She reaches for a remote on the side of the bed. "Let me help you sit up."

Fitz is no longer in a medbay pod, but he is in a hospital bed. There are machines that beep and IVs coming out of his arm. He looks around, not understanding what's going on, where he is.

"You saved my life, you know that? I wouldn't be alive now without you," Jemma says. She smiles brightly. "The team's been waiting for you to wake up. We've all been so worried."

Fitz can't stop staring at Jemma. Here she is—alive, happy, clearly scared for him. But that can't possibly be true. His mind knows what's real.

_I killed you, _he thinks._ I've killed you nine times now. How can you be so cheerful, so happy to see me? Don't you know what I've done to you? How could you possibly forgive me?_


End file.
